On a private adult phone-sex line, Jim, a West Coaster in his late 20s,
connects with East Coast Abby. Birds of a feather--both of them witty,
obsessive, yuppie masturbators--they're off, trading stories and
fantasies and the psychopathologies of everyday life. Baker (The
Mezzanine, Room Temperature), heretofore more a monologist, a literary
performance artist, than much of a novelist, folds his deadpan honesty
and funny fussiness double--and though Jim and Abby finally seem so =
much
like the same voice that they don't really qualify as characters, they
don't have to: Baker has found a conceptual format, the phone sex,
perfectly tailored to his talents. This is a mini-epic of Big Chill--ed
safe-sex: rambling stories that start out as aids to titillation but =
dry
and crumble into homely and self-satisfied details that challenge
eroticism; the overturning of classical seduction theory (here, both =
the
man and woman, unseen to each other, know that the other has his/her
hand on his/her self); lots of little snappy apercus and joshings
establish intellectual coziness. The tropes of modern sex--olive oil,
VCRs, copying machines, the letters in Penthouse Forum--are traded
breezily, sometimes hilariously, but are nothing compared to the main
technological thrill; after Abby tells him exactly how she masturbates
in the shower, Jim (in the book's best and most concentrated moment)
declares it a miracle, ```a telephone conversation I want to have. I
love the telephone.''' And Baker does expose a strange kind of dignity,
in that Jim and Abby aren't using each other for very much more than as
instruments of exemption from embarrassment. Quite a literary season =
for
self-relief! First Harold Brodkey as the Mahler, the Liszt, of the
hand-job, now Nicholson Baker as its David Letterman. -- Copyright
=A91991, Kirkus Associates

"This is a scenario that belongs in Baghdad or Tehran. I don't think =
the
American people could find anything more alien to our way of life or
more
repugnant to the Bill of Rights than government intrusion into what we
think
or what we read." -- Pat Schroeder, former congresswoman who now heads
the
ASSOCIATION OF AMERICAN BOOK PUBLISHERS on Whitewater Starr's subpoena
of a
book store visited by Monica Lewinsky.=20

Lewinsky lawyer Ginsburg told UPI on Wednesday: "I hope the American
public
have a deep understanding of what it means that a prosecutor can not
only
invade a person's bedroom and a person's fantasies, but now can invade
what
we buy to read."

Starr hit KRAMERBOOKS & AFTERWORDS in Dupont Circle for records of =
books
Lewinsky purchased before becoming the focus of his investigation.=20

Nicholson Baker, author of the phone sex book VOX, one of Lewinsky's
apparent buys, tells a newspaper reporter: "Starr is mining for dirty
data
in an unprincipled and illegal way. No bookstore should cave in to his
intimidation. Starr should get down on his kneepads and beg the
country's
pardon for undermining the Constitution in this way."

Building...

____________________________________________________
Filed by Matt Drudge
The REPORT is moved when circumstances warranthttp://www.drudgereport.com for breaks
(c)DRUDGE REPORT 1998 =20
Not for reproduction without permission of the author